See, the problem with the American judicial system is that when it comes to accountability for public officials, it very often doesn't work until after they've finished doing the damage, if at all. They let the robbers finish smashing all the jewellery cases before deciding whether to arrest them or to make their leader the chief of police.
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That doesn't prove anything. There's no proof that the person currently using it is the same person as the person who created the account.
By the way, you might also notice this argument also works against age verification systems where the user's age is verified only once. Unless you intend to check their identity every single time they log in.
Age verification is just a ham-fisted way for the state to try to take over a role that should be exercised by parents. Parental controls exist, people!
Governments don't hate privacy intrinsically. They just don't think it's important. Violating privacy using mass surveillance has no visible downside to the uninformed public. Policy makers just notice that destroying privacy makes it easier to catch cybercriminals and decide it's a worthwhile trade off. You probably disagree with that. But there are far too many people who just go along with it.
I'm late, but BK is Burger King, an American fast food hamburger restaurant. They are known for giving foldable cardboard crowns to kids who eat there (see picture).
I know someone who fits that description, but when he applied, the Pokémon Company dug up his past and denied his application. His wife was approved though, so he's fine with it.
But the Pokémon Company has no way to differentiate between a genuinely changed person and someone who has a seedy past and is still seedy. So they err on the safe side. At the location I run events at, some casual events are between 50-80% children so I understand why.
I am a TCG judge, but there are also judges for the video game and Pokémon Go. I can only answer why the TCG has judges.
Sometimes, the rules present some ambiguity, so a judge is needed to resolve disputes. There are also niche edge cases which not all people are aware of (for example, you generally can't play a card that searches your deck if you have no cards in your deck, unless the card has other effects), so it's helpful to have a rules expert on hand.
Some tournaments have significant prizes on the line. I've reffed events where the total prize pool was hundreds of dollars. When that happens, inevitably, there are disputes and people make mistakes. Judges are there to enforce the tournament rules and serve as the official arbiters for disputes. Sometimes, people inadvertently break the rules, by playing cards they're not supposed to or by forgetting to perform a required action. When that happens, a judge steps in to resolve. And sometimes, disputes are just petty adults acting like children, like complaining that your opponent did not shuffle their deck throroughly enough (but sometimes we do observe actual children not shuffling their deck well enough, but they're children so we just go and shuffle for them)
Judges also deal with disciplinary problems too. For example, we have the ability to issue penalties to players for rules infractions or disqualify or ban them for being disruptive. These penalties are recorded on the Pokémon Company's player database and if a player gets kicked out of too many events (especially prestigious ones like a regional tournament, North America/European Internationals, or the world championship), they eventually may be prevented from attending events.
It's fortunately never happened at any event I've worked at, but an examples of some things that would get a player disqualified would be failing a deck legality check unless the player fixes it immediately, cursing excessively, annoying other players and refusing to stop when asked, being caught cheating, wearing inappropriate clothing/not exercising good personal hygiene, or drinking alcohol or being drunk/high.
The test is 100% multiple choice, so I have no idea. It's graded automatically and if you fail, you know immediately and you can retake it in a week.
You apply online, take an exam, and pass a background check. Then you go and obtain at least one of the certs, which are just online courses.
It's not difficult, but to pass the exam you do need to study the provided manuals and rulebooks.
So, I volunteer at what, according to the Pokémon Company, is the highest-attendence Play! Pokémon location in the region.
While it is indeed mostly adults, we do get several children at our events. Specifically, the store runs both competitive and casual Pre-release events and casual ones tend to be around 80% children (of around 30 attendees).
Okay, so I am an actual Pokémon Professor, let me provide some context behind this:
Pokémon Professors are people who are certified by the Pokémon Company to run officially-sanctioned Pokémon tournaments and other events. Local game shops and other events venues depend on the presence of a Pokémon Professor to ensure their events actually have official status. Being an official Play! Pokémon location which runs officially-sanctioned events increases the amount of product that wholesale distributors will send to your store, meaning local game stores rely on Professors running events to maintain their supply of product from the Pokémon Company.
Pokémon Professors get certain powers to officiate events depending on their rank and the certs they possess. For example, people who have the Judge cert can act as referees making official rulings and people with the Organiser cert can "sanction" an event and run it using the Pokémon Company's official tournament software (a piece of shit called "TOM"), causing it to become an official Play! Pokémon event where the results are recorded on the Pokémon Company's database. Sanctioned tournaments also appear on the Pokémon Company's tournament finder website which can drive a lot of customers to your event. Especially for the larger privately-hosted tournaments (League Challenges and League Cups), you need to have a Professor sanction it for people to actually come and you need at least one Professor on hand to officiate it.
Being a Pokémon Professor is sometimes profitable. Most Professors are volunteers or work for local game stores, but getting a high rank and accumulating certs can result in very lucrative gigs. For example, serving as a judge during a regional tournament is a paid role and judges get compensated somewhere between US$1200-1500 (worth of easily-sellable Pokémon product) for one weekend of work. Even the pack of promotional cards that they give Professors with every new set is worth hundreds of dollars. And some local game stores who don't have an in-house Pokémon Professor will contract it out to one they find locally.
And because Pokémon is a game which attracts lots of children, the Pokémon Company, very justifiably, requires a squeaky-clean background check. Any single blemish more serious than a speeding ticket, and you're out.
It's pretty rare for good people to become immensely wealthy and stay good people. Money corrupts, and once you're to a point where money is no longer survival but a high score, that starts to drive your thinking.
Only place on Earth that would cheer the arrival of a 7.25 USD minimum wage
Company run by right-wing billionaire: We lost all our money, sales are down 600%, and our CEO got arrested for sexting a 13-year-old girl
Stock: Up 1.2%
If you really think I'm defending the companies here while attempting to insult me, I'm afraid this conversation is over.
I did just read your username, and unfortunately, I believe I have interacted you before and prior interactions also offered more insults and ad hominem than conversation. I hope you eventually outgrow this phase, but right now, you've been really annoying to interact with, despite our political views being aligned on this.
Not hyperbole. Analogy. If you think I am comparing fines to the death penalty you have drawn the wrong conclusion. I'm comparing your reasoning to Draco's. The exact punishment itself doesn't actually matter.
Saying "fuck your argument" does not make it invalid. It's not about "feelings" and I don't know why you think it is. I'm saying that companies who break the same law should face the same degree of punishment. That's more than just saying that forking over the same amount of money is therefore an equal punishment. The goal is to make the punishment have an equal degree of pain no matter who it is inflicted upon.
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be punished harshly. I'm saying that different companies who break the same laws should face the same degree of punishment.
The proposed system has a variable degree of harshness which is either far too lenient or extremely harsh, depending on factors that shouldn't be taken into consideration when deciding punishment.
So firstly, that doesn't matter, because net income is one of the most regulated figures in financial history, and manipulating it has got people into extremely deep trouble. Even rich people. If Amazon paid zero tax, which in most years, it doesn't, then it is because of the manipulation of tax loopholes, not because of net income manipulation.
Secondly, I don't advocate for monetary fines as a way to punish corporate lawbreaking at all. No matter what system you choose to calculate fines, there will always be problems with it. There's a more creative way to go about it.
You might notice that it's possible to put humans who break laws in jail, but not companies. But there's a punishment you can inflict on a company that you can't inflict on a human: you can confiscate part of their existence. The way that would work is a fine denominated in the equity of the company. So a 10% equity fine would mean that 10 new "golden shares" of the company get minted and pass into the possession of the Government, while the remaining common and preferred stock of the company now only represents 90% ownership.
This sort of fine would result in a direct 10% decrease in the stock price of the company, as the holder of the golden shares is now entitled to 10% of the company's dividends and gets 10% of the votes in corporate elections. Since the golden shares each represent a fixed percentage of equity, they cannot be watered down by the issuance of more stock. The golden shares can either be disposed of or they can become an investment for the state pension fund/sovereign wealth fund.
Since it seems that all stockholders and executives care about nowadays is to make the line go up, forcing the line to go down directly is a great way to discourage the behaviour that results in the line going down.
This is a bad line of reasoning to use in penal law. Have a look at the legal code of Draco of Athens (after whose name an interesting adjective was coined meaning "excessively harsh"). Why was it so harsh? Well, in Draco's view, all the minor crimes deserved death. It's not that complicated, really. If you don't want to die, don't steal cabbages.
Traditional family advocates are cheating in their spouses.
Anti-gay politicians have Grindr on their phone.
Pro-gun activists won't allow arms at their speaking events.
Anti-immigrant farmers hire cheap labour to pick their crops.
People who shout "protect the children", have the entire Library of Alexandria worth of child porn.
The people complaining about the country's budget deficit, hide all their money in Caymanian bank accounts.
Officials who say they want to "protect womens'' sports", caught being a creep to schoolgirls.
And xenophobes have four grandparents who were born outside the country.
What was that phrase again? Oh, right.